Prevent Wrapping of <code> Tags in Text

By  on  

Writers of technical documentation (or lowly blog writers like myself) oftentimes put property names in <code> tags within blocks of text. Doing so makes reading the text easier and prevents users from misconstruing explanatory text with property names. CSS uses a dash within its property and value names and English uses dashes to signal a place where the line could break the text...see the problem here? The contents of your <code> tag could wrap and that can be unsightly. To prevent that smudge in your otherwise flawless writing, you can use white-space: nowrap:

code {
    white-space: nowrap;
}

The only downside of modifying white-space is that the code could flow well out of its container if the code text is lengthy. I would contend that length property names would be best placed on their own line (in their own block) but that issue is one to keep in mind. You could use text-overflow: ellipsis and a max-width to temper the element width, but the text could then lose its meaning.

It's up to you to decided if this could be safe for your own use. I just think it's a nice little addition to keep your content from breaking in ways you haven't thought of!

Recent Features

  • By
    CSS Gradients

    With CSS border-radius, I showed you how CSS can bridge the gap between design and development by adding rounded corners to elements.  CSS gradients are another step in that direction.  Now that CSS gradients are supported in Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome...

  • By
    7 Essential JavaScript Functions

    I remember the early days of JavaScript where you needed a simple function for just about everything because the browser vendors implemented features differently, and not just edge features, basic features, like addEventListener and attachEvent.  Times have changed but there are still a few functions each developer should...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    HTML5 Context Menus

    One of the hidden gems within the HTML5 spec is context menus. The HTML5 context menu spec allows developers to create custom context menus for given blocks within simple menu and menuitem elements. The menu information lives right within the page so...

  • By
    Introducing MooTools HeatMap

    It's often interesting to think about where on a given element, whether it be the page, an image, or a static DIV, your users are clicking.  With that curiosity in mind, I've created HeatMap: a MooTools class that allows you to detect, load, save, and...

Discussion

  1. As an in between step or when modifying white-space is unwanted, you could use “‑” to show a dash but not break on it.

  2. Little late to the game here but…

    That’s an interesting problem you bring up at the end there. It is rare to have an inline code tag break out of its container, but there is a way around it. Here it is:

    http://jsbin.com/UQUfuXUX/1/edit

    Two things to note:

    – I’m using a non-breaking hyphen character, inserted with its decimal notation.
    – I’ve added word-wrap: break-word in the CSS to prevent long lines from breaking the container.

    Truthfully, it’s not an ideal solution to do this solely on the front-end. Preferrably you would have some sort of back-end function that automatically replaces hyphens inside of ‘code’ tags with the non-breaking hyphen character.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!